Lady Guinevere's Tales - My Poetry Blog

Poetry, musings and meanderings of my time...what has created me and my world. This is a chest of precious things...silks, satin, velvet in rich, deep colors...there are jewels tucked away...sorrows and pain...travels and boundless joy. Wearing thin, it is time to bring them out and share. "You know my face, my laugh, my smile, my scowl and my anger, but you have not known me...until now." All writings and artwork are my own and copyrighted unless noted.

Tuesday, February 5, 2013

Eternal and Infinite

Eternal and Infinite

you have haunted me

from childhood

guardian

beautiful lover

fire and lightning

blaze from your fingertips

surrounding my soul

in a feather's touch

you are my longings

that transcended dreams

vibrating

with the movement

of waves in moonlight

intoxicating

hypnotic pull

draws me

over endlessly

headlong

into his sea

your creation

eternal and infinite seduction

are promises

you hold within your eyes

it lingers

honeyed

on your lips

impossibly soft

waiting for the

right

moment

to steal my resolve

my body

my past disappointments

opening my mouth

I breathe you in

great gulping breaths

becoming part of your sea

both of us

as one in the waves

Lost Lake

Lost Lake

scattered out

bits blowing under dry oak debris

the dogs

lick their bones

back to life

sinew stretching

in plumps to rip corruption

in the shallows

deep down white fingers

grasp

disjointed movement

suddenly scorched by

sunlight piercing secret holes

the hidden dead withdraw

to their raven pools

skirted by slime and brambles

searching

cloth and leather

tearing into living flesh

to raise scarlet ribbons

the sand is alive

liquid

sucking

at legs and arms

craving the caress... carrion

never alone

buzzing clamor

greedily fattening

their pearlescent bulk

in his city of maggots

no merry Jack is he

for children's stories

keeper of secrets

guardian of lost lake

Girl with the Smile

Balloon Over Baghdad

Dancing on a Pin

Wednesday, January 30, 2013

Empty Room

Tortured Soul and the All Seeing Eye

Empty Room

sounding casual

he simply stated that

he missed her

after only a few hours

coaxing her

just

little

while

longer

kissed her

held her

whisked her away

to the room with it's music

reason had little

to do with this

frenzy

picking up the phone

his voice

so low and

dusky mellow

tempting her

to break

running

forgetting reason

convention

the promises se made herself

throwing open the possibilities

the door eases

closed

to an

empty room

Anesthesia

Anesthesia

an ampule of water
clear
crystal
green canisters
and red filled vials
colored fluids
staining yellow
under eyes pressed
so tight
it flares out
into raw nerves
pulsing
through fibers
bloody endings

hold still

silent

unbreathing

mock sliver

unstable

sensations

blending bitter tastes

whirling and snaking smoke

pushing it

down

into a crevasse

nonexistent

only moments

before

Voice

Sphinx at the Egyptian Mausoleum - Fresno, CA
Copyright 2001 - Louise Ann Stowell

Voice
the times I speak loudest
are when I am most silent
tumble twist
the silver strands from my heart
spin
so fine
the eye can not see
but the soul
perceives clearly

Friday, January 25, 2013

Fear - Can You Be Afraid of a Character in Your Writing?

Can you be afraid of a topic...more importantly a character in a story you are writing?

I had checked out a fantastic book from the library last week called The Winter Ghosts by Kate Mosse. I love her other books...Labyrinth and Sepulcher. The weather is changing from snow to rain and I was feeling the need for a little moody reading.

There was a paragraph in her book that described almost exactly and incident that happened to me many years ago when I was living in Fresno at the Calvary Cemetery. It was, I guess, a ghost story. I am not completely sure what "it" was nor why the incident happened. The only thing that comes to mind is that I was in the wrong place at the wrong time. Other than that I have no idea why the incident occurred.

However, upon reading Kate Mosse's description of "silence," I thought, "Wow! I need to write that story down. Fictionalize it. This would be a great story!"

And so I began to do so. I soon found that I was having difficulty in getting the beginning down. As I progressed, I realized that I was writing like it was one of the old reports I used to generate at the engineering firm. It had descriptions and details, but not nearly enough emotion. I was writing it clinically. That bothered me. Bothered me enough to roll around in my brain while I slept and awaken me at 3 in the morning last Wednesday. Waking Terry on my getting up, I wound up discussing it with him.

What he said was interesting. He suggested that it could be that I was afraid. Silly, right? Not really. As we talked more about it, he said that perhaps there was a part of me that was more frightened than I consciously admit. That maybe I was afraid I would conjure this thing up...get it's attention just from the telling of it. Enlightenment! (He is so good for me! How he pus up with me, I don't know!)

So today I am about to sit down and re-write the story. I am going to allow myself to let my imagination go and get it out on paper. My thinking is that I need to exorcise it. This may be achieved by writing about it. Let's see what happens!

Friday, January 18, 2013

Research and Writing - San Francisco Style

I have been spending the last few days researching for a story I am writing. The story line was created a little over ten years ago. Suddenly in the past week, I have had more and more information and ideas come to me for this story than I almost know what to do with.

Looking through at lot of pages from the Outside Neighborhood Project, SF Genealogy, the Ocean Beach Bulletin and the California Digital Newspaper Collection I have found a wealth of information on subjects that have stumped me for years. Many of these places were still in existence when I was a child or still are around...at least building wise. Many have been torn down over the years, caught fire or just vanished in the 1906 earthquake and subsequent fire. The history I have found has been fascinating! The articles from the years of 1895-1896 in the San Francisco Call Newspaper Archive have more than charged my imagination, they have been extremely valuable in giving me a more in depth view of life during that period of time. One article was humorous in the fact it was written as a complaint to the newspaper from a gentlewoman of the period complaining that the papers gossip had besmirched her good name by printing an article talking about her assignation with a gentleman at the Cliff House in a private dining room. She claimed not to have known of the Cliff House's sordid history. Women didn't go out with "strange" men unescorted in those days...and especially not to the first Cliff House. It was known to be quite a rowdy place before Adolph Sutro purchased it, being a saloon, diner, gambling hall and supposedly rumored to also have some prostitution going on at times.

If you ever get bored and wish to look through some interesting sites, I suggest you try one of these above and check it out.

For the record, her is a photo from 2002 of myself drinking a Gin Fizz in the corner booth overlooking Ocean Beach in the Redwood Room of Cliff House prior to it's new (and ugly unhistoric) reincarnation.
To the ghosts and memories of the Old Cliff House...Cheers!

And again that same day by the old lookout at the Cliff House by the Camera Obscura.